


Our Only Health is the Disease

by yet_intrepid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Remus reads Eliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:32:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he can hear James in his head. "You just have a furry little problem."</p><p>But he's acutely aware that he IS the furry little problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Only Health is the Disease

**Author's Note:**

> Title and later quotation are from Eliot's Four Quartets, specifically East Coker.

Remus looked ruefully at his arms, still bearing marks of the wolf--scratches and cuts that Madam Pomfrey had been unable to entirely erase. "Not so bad as last time," he offered, but Sirius just grunted in displeasure and tossed him some salve from the desk.

Remus caught the jar, although he fumbled a little, but didn't open it. Instead he sat down on his bed and turned it over and over in his hands, running his thumbs across the wood.

Sirius' sharp eyes froze him.

"What?" he asked.

Sirius growled under his breath. "Put on the bloody salve, Moony, before I do it for you."

Remus, concilatory as ever, twisted off the cap, but his finger hesitated above the cream and he felt that he could not, must not, shouldn't be allowed--

Sirius' eyebrows slowly rose.

Remus could hear himself breathing, feel his pulse, but his mind was tangled. He stared hard at his finger and willed a thought to come out, any thought, any glimpse of rationality--

"I'm disgusting."

There it was, in the open air. Remus looked up very slowly, and then Sirius was saying, "fuck, Remus, _no_ ," and crossing the room in two strides.

Remus knew he was about to yell. "Listen," he interrupted, with all the firmness he could manage (although he vaguely realized it coming out as desperation). "Listen, Sirius."

Sirius stopped short, shaking. Remus held out his arms to show the injuries.

"I did this," he said. "I would do this again. To any innocent human. I claw and I bite and I want to kill. I am dangerous; I am violent; I am murderous. I am disgusting."

Part of him knew what effort it was taking for Sirius to stay silent, and that part of him was grateful.

"And if I hurt people," he went on, running one finger over a cut, "isn't it fair I should be hurt?"

Sirius growled again at that. "You only ever hurt yourself, Remus, damn it to the ninth circle--"

This being a wizarding expression, Remus was not sure whether Sirius was aware of the irony. For Remus was treacherous. All of this was treachery against himself, and would be treachery against them were he let loose, and it was fitting that he bear the consequences.

"I hurt and I am hurt," Remus mused quietly. He looked away from Sirius, staring into the floor as though it held the answers to life's mysteries. "I am at once the monster and its victim. Or am I merely caught in an eternal cycle of just payment, receiving what I am due for what I am?"

Sirius' hardened face vibrated with emotion. "You listen," he said. "You are not the wolf. You don't want what it wants. You are Remus and you are good and gentle and the most fucking unselfish idiot I've ever met or called a friend. You aren't--"

"Sirius," said Remus, wearily, "are you Padfoot?"

"I chose to be Padfoot!"

"Are you a pureblood? A wizard? A Black?"

And he watched Sirius compute that last, watched him think of the way his family had seeped into him, and still outed itself in his face and his vanity and his spite. 

"It's part of you," Remus said. "And sometimes you hate it, and you'd throw it away in an instant if you could, damn the consequences to the ninth circle or wherever, but it's part of you."

"And you try to rip it out," Sirius picked up, "but it leaves roots and grows again. And you try to reason it out of yourself, but it shouts too loud to hear you. And you try to drown it in everything else but that doesn't convince it to leave, either."

"And sometimes you think it might not be so awful; maybe you can use bits and pieces of it to grow from and be getting along with. But then it shoots up again and it tries to split you in halves--" 

Remus broke off with something very like a sob.

Sirius sat on the bed next to him. "Human and monster," he said.

"Gryffindor and Black."

The corner of Sirius' mouth twitched up. "Almost the same," he said.

Remus laughed then, as desperately as he'd nearly sobbed. "I'd want to be at a safe distance, but your mother accused of being a werewolf would be--oh. Oh my."

"I'll send Reggie an anonymous note and see if he takes it home."

"Bet he won't. He likes peace."

"Bet he will. Black instinct; doesn't like people slandering the family or keeping secrets from Mum. Odds?"

"Oh, I dunno, if I lose I'll--resharpen all your quills, since you ruin them."

"Not as bad as James does! If I lose I'll buy you chocolate. You choose the kinds, but the more you experiment, the more you get. Actually I might save that for your birthday, since I'll win."

Remus shook his head. "Deal then."

"Deal."

They flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. 

"Sometimes I think I know who I am," Remus said. 

"Sometimes I think you should put that salve on your arms since you're still holding it anyway."

And Remus, though he was not quite sure that he (monster and man in one) deserved it, decided that "I'm holding it" was solid enough reasoning for applying salve this time. He quoted, half to himself, as he scooped up fingerfuls of cream and spread it across cuts and scratches:

_Our only health is the disease_  
 _If we obey the dying nurse_  
 _Whose constant care is not to please_  
 _But to remind us of our, and Adam's curse,_  
 _And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse._

Sirius looked at him. "Poets," he said.


End file.
